The Washington Post quotes a neighbor: “Overall, I would just call him a socially awkward kid, I don’t know, shy and quiet. Didn’t really look you in the eye. Just kind of a weird kid, maybe. I can’t tell you any specific incidents why [I thought so].”

Apparently the older bro told some news outlets that his younger bro has Asperger's and is "developmentally disabled."

I think those are the new words for "low IQ."

I just think Adam was dumb, and in this day and age no one is dumb, so the idiots who run our school system and social services stuck some fancy labels on him. (Not saying that there aren't true Asperger's people, I just think it is applied promiscuously.)

As for the "developmentally disabled" part, that's just another word for "dumb."

As for having a girlfriend, so what? That somehow makes him functional?

HS, you have some very strange readers. Most of them seem to be guys who hate women, and who get their rocks off by commenting on your site.

I was right. The Lanzas are SWPL through and through. If you see Ryan's facebook page, he has the classic SWPL attire (pea coat). The brothers' dad was vice president of taxes at GE Financials according to wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Hook_Elementary_School_shooting). Ryan was born in Fairfield county, CT, and lived in Honoken, NJ.

Ryan told police that Adam had a personality disorder. This is not a case of omega male rage - this is a mentally disturbed SWPL (probably beta).

I personally have Asperger's, and my IQ is well above average (as with most aspies). I recall being placed in the "gifted" classes when I was younger. Due to my social awkwardness, It was difficult not being the laughing stock before I matured. This may be a surprise to you, but I have friends, and have gotten along quite well with even the alpha type jocks, even making a bit of a name for myself.

Despite that, I still have trouble recognizing facial expressions, cannot recognize sarcasm, have obsessive interests, and have a goofy method of walking. The fact is that despite popular belief, a few adept individuals with Asperger's syndrome can function better than most people. Perhaps some people have a certain level of charm that others don't have. This guy may have been an idiot, or had Asperger's, but that certainly isn't what caused it. People that do these things are usually sociopaths.

I've read that his mother retired to look after her 20 year old som. So it is unlikely he had a girl friend. Maybe his mother bought the guns to protect herself from her son.
I also read that his older brother Ryan hadn't had any contact with his brother for two years.

@Bob Jones, Yes, I realize that true Aspies are almost by definition high IQ. I said that the designation is "applied promiscuously" - that is, applied to anyone who doesn't fit into a certain box, by underqualified education bureaucrats and social workers. OK?

I totally doubt that Adam Lanza was in gifted classes. I repeat: I think he was a dumb ass, a low IQ boy, not very bright, stupid, whatever - and people like that don't, can't, exist in modern America. So we make up bullshit names for them, like "developmentally disabled" and if they have a personality issue we dump them into the Asperger's box, along with people who truly do have Asperger's, like you.

Some of the comments on this thread make me wonder if anyone has looked at the IQ of mass murderers.

My armchair theory - spree killers like today have lower IQs - no future time orientation, no long term plan, seem more driven by desire merely to cause pain/fear (less advanced motive).

Killers like Ted Bundy are high IQ - more future time orientation, long term planning, seem more driven by gratification agenda (more advanced motive).

So was Ted McVeigh high or low IQ?

Also - my guess is that although the father was high class the mother was prole, as evidenced by her gun ownership and seeming part time job.

Finally, I don't think it was good for the president to come out and cry today. We're becoming weaker and weaker as a nation. Bush might have gotten glassy eyed on 9/11 but he never cried. You save that stuff for the memorial service. We need a man in the White House again. I don't even think Clinton would have cried - Bill or Hillary.

beat the crap out of the goth kids in school and ensure this crap doesnt occur again. NYT says shooter was a goth kid. All these freaks and weirdos, the ones who jack off to dialogues of the Joker, the nihilists, they need some disciplining from the rest of society. In the past they would have been cast off into the cold to die, now they hang tight in college dorms and momma's basement and explode spectacularly like this %$^#^ and the one in Colorado. Or pack them off and send them to war or something.

Nice job of being wrong in this thread. No one uses Asperger's as a euphemism for dumb, because people with Asperger's aren't dumb. And, apparently, this kid was in honors classes and did well in them. 0-for-2.

"The Daily News article is more informative than the NY Times. Of note is that Adam’s father, Peter, is rich. He was paying the mom $240,000/year in alimony." - Half Sigma

This story started off as beta male rage but now takes on an MRM and class dimension. What happened to marrying well and how middle/upper class people aren't like the proles? You need to retract your misleading commentary on these topics siggy.

This tragedy is most similar to the Virginia Tech massacre that happened a few years ago.

Both perps are mentally troubled men around 20 years of age, with possible autistic tendencies but with other problems as well (autistics are not particularly violent, but autistics can have other problems just like non-autistics). People with major mental problems are almost by definition omegas, but the term "omega male rage" implies that the primary motivation was anger from being an omega. Columbine was more appropriately omega male rage; the CT massacre and the VATech massacre were both by mentally ill men who "snapped."

"beat the crap out of the goth kids in school and ensure this crap doesnt occur again. NYT says shooter was a goth kid. All these freaks and weirdos, the ones who jack off to dialogues of the Joker, the nihilists, they need some disciplining from the rest of society. "

-

I went to a bad high school during the late 90s/early 2000s. Soon after the Columbine stuff happened everyone assumed people who dressed like "goths" were all secret Klebolds just itching to mass murder at the slightest provocation. In reality any given social circle of "weird kids" tended to be more intelligent and mature than their high school milieu. Most of those weirdos miraculously became "normal" after high school. And many "normal" kids, fresh off the best years of their lives, descended into criminality, unwed motherhood and low-skilled labor.

Why the heck was he described as "developmentally disabled" first, and then next time I check the internet he apparently has a high IQ....Which is it? Being in honors classes alone does not indicate high IQ, but it is also a pretty good sign that he was not developmentally disabled either.

Mentally deranged takes out anger on little defenseless kids. Why can't we have a deranged killer who shoots rapist and murderers? No No..that would make too much sense in our messed up world. Hollyweird needs to start a trend where serial killers starts targetting gangbangers and the lowlifes of society. This is just plain wrong.

For whatever reason, he developed a severe facial deformity. His face grew downward instead of forward and outward, to a grotesque degree. His facial length relative to the distance between his eyes is probably at least 6 standard deviations from the mean. In other words, he's a freak.

Because he was so ugly and dorky looking, he was treated like a leper. Guys made fun of him, girls rejected him, teachers ignored him, and society in general regarded him as dog shit. Being a hideously ugly guy, he had no legitimate way to get back at society. He also had no legitimate way to improve his life because his biggest problem was the structure of his skull. He was a smart guy, so he realized suicide was his best option. The shooting was simply an "F You" to society for treating him like scum.

jayNE you couldn't be more wrong about Asperger's Syndrome(which technically no longer exists as a diagnosis.... it's now Autistic Spectrum Disorder). This guy is in the class of Anders Breivik (also diagnosed with AS) and more likely than not James Holmes. There are a subset of people with high functioning autism who are also schizoid and psychotic to whatever degree, with weak reality testing. Bobby Fischer would be a good example of this. He was born too late for the HFA label but is a classic case. Yet he was delusional and paranoid (he thought the Soviets had put implants in his teeth before the 1972 match). It was dismissed in his early years because of his genius and fame but as he aged it came painfully to the fore. Anyone who listened to his radio rantings late in life could see this was not a man of sound mind.

"Finally, I don't think it was good for the president to come out and cry today. We're becoming weaker and weaker as a nation. Bush might have gotten glassy eyed on 9/11 but he never cried. You save that stuff for the memorial service. We need a man in the White House again. I don't even think Clinton would have cried - Bill or Hillary."

Hard to be a man when you're gay. But I don't believe for a second those tears were real.

actually, beating the goth kids would probably increase the chances of shootings. part of the solution for a more peaceful society is to figure out ways for people to develop close and meaningful relationships.

Oh, yeah, the same who get whipped up about whatever event the mass media peddle to them.

There are 17 000 murders in the USA every year, but most never make the headlines. Are the lives of these unknown dead of less value than those of killing-spree victims?

Fuck these mass media hypes.

As to Lanza, he's a sociopath, basically. Except through designer babies and preventive abortion, there is no way to eliminate them from the gene pool. There are a lot of goths, aspergies or timid nerds in the world, and 99.99% of them would never think about harming innocent people.

Besides this criticism, I wanted to say I agree with the notion spree killers are lower IQ than serial killers and terrorists. Spree killing innocents leads you nowhere and has no impact. An intelligent sociopath will rather "make the pleasure last".

"I personally have Asperger's, and my IQ is well above average (as with most aspies)."

Actually most aspergoids do NOT have above average IQ. While it's true that they tend to be much smarter than classic autistics (who are largely defined by developmental speaking delays) they are still a little dumb on average (mean IQ in the 90s).

The notion that aspergoids are smart is caused by the popular idea (promoted by half sigma and others) that aspergers is an extreme form of nerdiness. But this theory is only half true. Nerds have high high IQ so if aspergoids were extreme nerds they would have extremely high IQ's which they don't (on average).

Instead it's probably more accurate to say aspergoids are low functioning nerds, and autistics are low-functioning aspergoids. Low functioning doesn't necessarily mean low IQ, it can also mean impairments in personality and social interaction; though people with a nerdy personality without the high IQ to go with it will have trouble functioning in society. High IQ nerds by contrast can function brilliantly (gates, zuckerberg). Sometimes high IQ nerds have kids who inherit their nerdiness without also inheriting the high IQ that goes with it and aspergers/autism is the result.

Since half-sigma equates nerdy with beta, and since the shooter appears to be a low functioning nerd, Half Sigma appears correct in predicting this was beta rage. A nerd is best defined as a hyper-K selected genotype. Since East Asians are the most highly evolved and most K selected race, they are a race of nerds. Ashkenazis are probably also quite K selected though they are nerdy in a more verbal way.

I meant to add Seung-Hui Cho to the list. His family in Korea and the family's pastor (in the US) told media he was autistic but the only extant diagnoses in the States were selective mutism and severe anxiety (which are both traits of autism). He was diagnosed in 8th grade and had an "emotional disturbance" label in high school with allowed him accommodations.

Everyone who is saying that killers can have high IQ 's is correct. This goes to show IQ alone isn't a very useful measure of a person.

However probably most killers don't have a high I Q.

Maybe a fairly high IQ is a necessary but not sufficient measure of a person.
On the other hand there are probably lots of good people with low IQs--but they might not be the ones you want to marry or elect as leaders.

As I already said: life is a mechanical process. Four billion years ago, a DNA molecule learned to replicate itself. That is all. No God, no purpose, no master plan, no justice, no meaning, just crude, dumb forces. As inmendham said: crude forces in control of precious commodities.

"Also, he was 20 but not in college and apparently without a job. Not a sign of being smart. "

Bullshit. I am 23 and have an IQ of 125 and am not in college nor do I have a job. I live on disability with my parents, as I suffer from social anxiety and depression, but spend my time reading widely, programming and playing the harpsichord. So fuck you with your drivel.

"As I already said: life is a mechanical process. Four billion years ago, a DNA molecule learned to replicate itself. That is all. No God, no purpose, no master plan, no justice, no meaning, just crude, dumb forces"

Cool, there was no RNA world that was forerunner to modern DNA and protein biochemistry, just a DNA molecule that formed de novo from the prebiotic soup that somehow replicated itself!

I am sarcastically responding to your comment; I am not implying that one can deduce from the results of scientific inquiry that a naturalistic origin of life is impossible since a feasible scenario for a naturalistic origin of life is not yet accessible to the scientists investigating this field. I am personally agnostic about it, since I find the practical implications of demonstrating the impossibility of a naturalistic origin of life irrelevant: it does not tell us anything about the attributes of the designer's personality of his intentions in creating life, except that he has the power to create life. Revelation, tradition, religious practice, and fellowship are more fruitful means for discovering the traits of God, or whether He loves us enough to suffer and die for us. Investigating the putative, demanding catalytic properties of RNA -- particularly its supposed capacity to act as an RNA-dependent RNA polymerase with high fidelity -- would never yield such spiritual insights.

So far, there is no adequate naturalistic origin of life hypothesis that explains how chemical reactions on the prebiotic earth can produce a macromolecular system capable of undergoing self-sustained Darwinian evolution (that is the "NASA definition" of life).

Please enlighten us how these "crude, dumb forces" spawned life on the early Earth. (It is indeed an interesting question, but highly dubious that you have a satisfactory answer.)
----

I actually commend you for your anti-natalism; it is a consistent, nihilistic philosophy congruent with the implications of dysteleological metaphysical naturalism. Again, I am not attempting to rebut anti-natalism by positing the a naturalistic origin of life is impossible; it was just a tangent.

Jeremy- anxiety and depression are not excuses for living on disability. I suffer from general anxiety but I am attending grad school. There are many ways of coping with mental issues, not all of them pharmaceutical.

"There are 17 000 murders in the USA every year, but most never make the headlines. Are the lives of these unknown dead of less value than those of killing-spree victims?

Fuck these mass media hypes."

Good post Alex.

Also, people get more upset over a drunk driving death than a regular accident because it 'could have been prevented." Well, so could regular accidents if the person were a better driver or didn't fall asleep etc..

"Social anxiety and Depression = disability

That qualifies pretty much EVERYONE

This is the world we live in, people."

There are extreme cases of everything. For example, there is pain and debilitating pain. I have some nagging pain on many days, but it doesn't affect my life. Maybe my shoulder hurts or I have a headache, but I just take a pill and it helps. Some people have back pain so bad they can't even get out of bed.

"I repeat: I think he was a dumb ass, a low IQ boy, not very bright, stupid, whatever - and people like that don't, can't, exist in modern America."

Sure they do. There is even an acronym that describes them, but HS stopped using it a little while ago. =)

"Mentally deranged takes out anger on little defenseless kids. Why can't we have a deranged killer who shoots rapist and murderers? No No..that would make too much sense in our messed up world. Hollyweird needs to start a trend where serial killers starts targetting gangbangers and the lowlifes of society."

Some of your comments about asperger's syndrome (AS) were disappointing. First, not all Aspies are the same. Some are smart and some aren't. Some have difficulty functioning and others don't. Some have comorbidity and others don't. Second, AS may be on the autism spectrum but its an oversimplification to say that its merely high functioning autsim. It is high functioning but that's not the only difference. Third, the idea that nerds are just smarter Aspies is utterly ridiculous. There really isn't any hard, fast rules for what is and isn't a nerd. So I suppose one can assign that label according to their own whims. But AS and Autism tend to share some unique brain structures and symptoms that many of those who would be considered nerds wouldn't. Its possible that some very mild aspies mistake themselves for nerds and vice versa. But most people with AS know it. They might not know what its called. There are plenty of people who never learn the name but they know they're different. My parents noticed something when I was a baby. And I realized it as soon as I started school. By the time I was in jr high I realized it was probably biology not sociology and that I couldn't do much about it. I was grown and married with children before I finally discovered the name of it. There didn't seem much point in getting a diagnosis so I didn't bother. But I've since had a nephew who has been. People would call me a lot of things -- good and bad -- but I don't think anyone would call me a nerd. And I have an IQ over 150. You have absolutely no clue about this subject and you should avoid discussing it in the future. This clip expresses how I view your earlier comment,

"No one uses Asperger's as a euphemism for dumb, because people with Asperger's aren't dumb. And, apparently, this kid was in honors classes and did well in them. 0-for-2."

How many times do I have to say that I KNOW Asperger's syndrome people are intelligent? What I said was that I doubt he truly had Asperger's syndrome, this is just a diagnosis being (a) thrown around on this comment thread and (b) promiscuously applied to too many people who don't have it.

Yes, I read that he was in honors classes. That doesn't mean he was smart. It means he was tracked. Don't you know that in Lake Woebegone the children are all above average?

Oh, a neighbor said he was a "genius." That proves....what?

Destructure,

Wrong on all counts.

I thought your work on the Trayvon Marton hoax was great. I enjoy reading your blog.

AL does not appear to be a primary psychopath, a la Ted Bundy)who are low anxious. To label him as a sociopath is tautologous, adds nothing of value. He has to have severely blunted affect (hence might fit into the autism spectrum disorder category) and definitely above average intelligence. Maybe his mom was screwed up too. Ordinary people can get very angry and maybe kill in the heat of the moment but it takes a very special person to massacre elementary school kids.

Tabi isn't going to go anywhere since she doesn't have the SAT scores. The article says her SAT scores were below the national median and she is attending EMT school. She's a prole and doesn't have the mental capacity to transcend her economic status.

Let's not forget that she is white too. I went to an undergrad institutions heavily constituted of NAMs, but when you break down students by their ethnicity, whites score at 1100/1600, while the NAMs are below 1000.

" AS may be on the autism spectrum but its an oversimplification to say that its merely high functioning autsim. It is high functioning but that's not the only difference."

Well the other difference is aspergoids don't have developmental speech delays, which falls under the higher functioning category.

" Third, the idea that nerds are just smarter Aspies is utterly ridiculous."

What I said was nerds are just high functioning aspergoids and aspergoids are just high functioning autistics. Intelligence helps us function but one can be low functioning despite genius IQ if one has other impairments like specific (social) learning disabilities, extreme anxiety or obsessions.

A lot of claims of high intelligence get exaggerated. Anytime someone commits an atrocity (whether it's Hitler, Bin Laden or just the freak of the week) people love to gush about how bright the villain is. It makes people feel open minded and discerning plus the public seems to love the idea of the evil genius, and, I fear it reflects some subconscious admiration.

Once again, your definition of nerds as "just high functioning aspergoids" is arbitrary and represents your own perception of what nerd and asperger's are rather than any professional opinion. The genetics of autism is complex and not completely understood but still highly heritable. Therefore, apparent similarities between some nerds and some aspies is not evidence of nerds being high functioning aspies. Nerds are only autistic if they possess the biological basis for autism. Similarly, someone only has sickle cell anemia if they possess the sickle cell gene. If they don't possess the sickle cell gene then they don't have sickle cell anemia no matter how similar others think the symptoms are.

"Once again, your definition of nerds as "just high functioning aspergoids" is arbitrary and represents your own perception of what nerd and asperger's are rather than any professional opinion. The genetics of autism is complex and not completely understood but still highly heritable. Therefore, apparent similarities between some nerds and some aspies is not evidence of nerds being high functioning aspies. Nerds are only autistic if they possess the biological basis for autism"

You don't have to call nerds autistic or aspergoid if you don't want to, but it seems there's a certain K selected brain which when high functioning is called nerdy and when low functioning is called autistic, with aspergers occupying an intermediate position. The biological basis for what we call nerdiness and what we call autism/aspergers appear to overlap, though not entirely because nerds are much higher functioning.

I have to concur with the commentators who are pointing out that people with asperger's generally aren't that intelligent. Most people with asperger's have average to below average IQ, but because of their obsessive tendencies may have one or two subjects/hobbies in which they possess a very high degree of knowledge. They also talk about facts relating to their favorite subjects more often that normal people. Hence the everyman misconception that they are "geniuses."